How much money has the Pirate Bay stolen from the RIAA?

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These attempts at suing people who pirate music and movies are really stupid for this reason. When you see people getting charged a million dollars for downloading a few songs illegally it just makes it seem like they're being greedy dicks and they have plenty of money already. Doesn't make me want to pirate things any less.

None.

RIAA used to be a useful company,
sugguesting recording levels
for certain things, now they are
just overgreed, useless stupid fools.

I don't buy cds from record labels who
sign with riaa

I agree with all of the above.

Glad I'm in the UK where the RIAA can't sue for piracy and where the only company that attempted to do so is pretty screwed at the moment due to DDoS attacks, leaked documents, big fines, and investigations by regulatory authorities. Justice, I say

That said, the Digital Economy Act is still there. For now. Let's hope they get rid of that crap.

Right <Here> is the appropriate cartoon for the occasion.

property is theft.

The Pirate Bay is not being charged with the simple possession of stolen goods, but with the illegal distribution of them. Therefore making comparisons regarding the worth of individual songs by saying that an iPod is worth more than anything else in the world is completely moronic.

I don't agree with the RIAA's manner of business, though I do think it's more on the right track going after torrent websites than when it was pursuing individual torrent users. I sympathise with them because they really don't have much power to stop music piracy at all, and litigation is their only means to deter it. Everyone criticises how they conduct themselves but nobody really knows how they should pursue an alternative strategy.

I'm a huge supporter of music artists and purchase all my music, attend concerts regularly and occasionally purchase concert merchandise. I do think it's tough to resist the allure of all the free illegally available music out there because it's so easily accessible, but I think it's important that we do to support the artists if we're to expect them to continue producing music.

When you buy an album by your favourite artist, just how much do you imagine actually goes to said artist?

Then give me back my underwear you thief.

ruveyn

I'd like to point something out after seeing mentions of "illegal downloads" and "theft".

Copyright infringement is not a criminal offense, it is civil. That therefore makes it unlawful, not illegal.

According to the Theft Act 1968 (British law), "a person shall be guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it."

When you download an unlawful copy of copyright content, you are not depriving another person of that content, neither are you appropriating anything; you're making a copy of a file.

Therefore, piracy isn't illegal and it cannot possibly be defined as theft.

Smart post. That's why I, who doesn't believe in stealing and has never stolen anything, don't consider file sharing to be stealing.

In fact, the higher the quantity of something in existence, the less valuable it is. This is why I also don't consider a digital file to be worth anything, because for example you can put a price on a vinyl album that was never released on CD and get bucks for it at an auction, but there are no boundaries as to how far an audio file can go. Even if you bought a modern USB turntable and ripped the audio to your computer, it no longer exists as that vinyl disc. It is the same thing as an mp3 you downloaded off of the Pirate Bay (not counting loss of sound quality unless it was ripped from that vinyl record (or one like it) and saved as a pure wave audio. And even then, the way the file is written can vary between two copies of the same vinyl record; there could be a scratch or minor flaw in the discs' grooves that will turn up as audible on the mp3 of Person A in Phoenix who bought it from a Goodwill but not on a file that was ripped off of a disc owned by Person B in Seattle who has had it in his/her collection for years and had taken great care of said collection.

£10

ROFL

Does pirating the music give the artists any money?

Besides that, there is more than just the artist to support. It takes more than the artist to produce a good quality recording. It takes producers and audio engineers, event organisers, and marketing people. Each of those, irrespective of how much one thinks they should receive, deserves their cut.

Last edited by Enigmatic_Oddity on 26 Oct 2010, 9:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Possibly.
Does pirating the music take the artists money?